


Terms & Conditions

by lokh



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 13:38:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1471810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokh/pseuds/lokh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a matter of accepting the conditions of the term.</p>
<p>Why doesn't Dirk identify with the term 'gay'? It's not because he's not attracted to boys, that's for sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terms & Conditions

**Author's Note:**

> Queer erasure frustration channeled into fic. God bless.
> 
> Warnings for blink-and-miss onesided incestual attraction and internalized homophobia.

It’s not that you don’t identify with the term.  
  
A childhood out at sea was a lonely childhood indeed. It’s hard to have a basis for what’s right and wrong when you’re the only person left alive. The ruins beneath your home only told you that even the blameless must suffer, and in a world such as this, you wonder what right and wrong really means.  
  
Instead, you learned very quickly what was practical and what was not.  
  
You learned that it was useless to fish in the face of a storm, that it was useless to capture seagulls only to set them free, that it was useless to feel empathy for a creature you were meant to eat, that it was useless to sway the boat after hours at sea and that it was useless to throw your pride in the face of a hurricane.  
  
You learned very quickly that the term would cause you more harm than it would good.  
  
With determined intent you consumed whatever media was available in a desperate attempt to make sense of a world so firmly turned upside down. A nation - a planet - ruined and destroyed, begotten by the destruction of another planet and no doubt countless more. Universes lost at the hands of an alien empress. This you knew. This youd turned over again and again in your head to find holes, to find another way, to parse what was useful from what was not.  
  
To finish what your brother couldn’t.  
  
He’d sent you things on the history he lived and the history that built you, but he didn’t give you everything. Most likely expected you to take initiative, out of a sense of paternal want for growth. Some things he gave you were useful, like how to maintain the structure that supported you. The foundations of robot assemblage. How to use the alchemiter. Other things he gave were useless, like empty cans. Credit cards that were meaningless. Toothbrushes without bristles.  
  
(You suspect this is the fault of time more than it is his.)  
  
Some things he gave you are the most useful of them all.  
  
Pages long raps about nothing. Letters never meant to be found lying around the house. Photographs of him making weird faces. An mp3 player that somehow still worked filled with shitty songs that had been played a thousand times.  
  
Videos.  
  
At first it was awkward. He told you what was going on, why he wasn’t there for you, why he would be if he could. He told you what was going to happen, what you’d have to do, and how you’d have to cope until then. In his earlier videos, he’d ask you how you were going, and sometimes you’d begin to answer him, before you both realized that your answer would forever remain unheard, and your heart ached at the time that stretched out between you. He’d devolve into nervous mumbled rapping, full of tension and his entire body vibrating.  
  
The tension only strengthened as time went on, but he began to still. Solidify. Concentrate. For having always seemed scattered he slowly began to gather, but his destination was the singularity that would break him apart again. He ran out of things to teach you and because you could not teach him he began to talk about himself.  
  
Trivial things, like how the coffee still tastes like complete and utter shit. Cutting himself off to say that he says it all the time, but he’ll never stop drinking it. Complaining about co-workers. Complaining about people not getting his films and talking meta via rap. Talking about rose. Talking about nothing.  
  
Sometimes he said nothing at all.  
  
His videos would always end with ‘be safe’. He once said ‘i love you’.  
  
There are no videos dated beyond that point.  
  
You rewatched the videos again and again, what could you have missed, what didn’t you see, what didn’t you hear?  
  
You sometimes heard that term.  
  
Usually he was frustrated. Sometimes he wasn’t thinking about it. The words would slip out of his mouth and you felt your heart drop. Sometimes he didn’t say the word, but you knew he meant it. Sometimes he’d say worse, like the thought of someone willingly being was incredible and ridiculous.  
  
He’d sometimes mock them in stereotypes you’ve seen in your tv shows, in your films and in your video games. Too dramatic. Limp-wristed. Vapid and vain and shallow. Misguided. In need of a father figure. In need of jesus or god or some other fucking deity. He’d roll back and say ‘not that there’s anything wrong with that’, but he’d do it again and again and again and every time you felt your heart shatter.  
  
It was nothing you hadn’t heard before. You’d seen it on forums, and you could ignore the sweaty preteen boys who were desperately trying to feel superior. You’d heard it in videos, and you could ignore the multitudes of people who laughed as if they’d just made a funny joke. You’d seen it in video games, and you could turn off the console.  
  
(You could angrily throw the disc against the wall.)  
  
(It made an ironic decorative piece.)  
  
You could ignore all of them with ease. It was hard to ignore your own brother.  
  
(In more ways than one.)  
  
You think maybe if he didn’t talk like that, you would’ve been able to handle it. You think if you didn’t have to hear his derisive snort every time he talked about it, maybe you would’ve been fine.  
  
But sometimes, when he was more subdued, he talked about it quietly. Bitterly. Sometimes he’s nursing a broken jaw, a bruised shoulder, a cracked wrist. It made you feel ingratiatingly small.  
  
You wonder if there are other things he hasn’t told you.  
  
You wonder if it would be more useful if he had.  
  
But you saw what the term did to him. What it did to others. How others treated them because of it and how they had twisted a facet of their identity into something that could harm them and you couldn’t allow yourself to become so vulnerable, you couldn’t allow this thing to become a part of your identity if it’d only self-destruct and ruin you. In the term was contained a system you could not conform to, one that you refused to conform to but if you accepted it, it was only a matter of time before the system swallowed you whole, until it bent you to its expectations. You couldn’t afford for it to become you, not when you’d seen how others would treat you, not when you’d gained friends that could treat you with such hostility and the term thus became  
impractical.  
  
At some point, you, the prince of heart, decided that this was a part of your identity that was destroyed by others.  
  
It’s not a matter of whether you identify with the term or not.


End file.
